Jaime’s dissertation was a study of religious change. Specifically, the rise of meditation as a serious topic in academia and American popular culture. Basically, meditation has found its way into many areas of American social life – even the military! The reason Jaime finds this interesting is that it is a serious change in American spiritual life that happened without the process of conflict and resource mobilization as described in works like Fligstein and McAdam’s Theory of Fields.

Jaime points out that movements can have great impacts by bypassing the contentious politics route. She argues that American meditation is a top down, elite driven movement that does a lot of institutional work behind the scenes and uses the levers of elite institutions to subtly inject new religious practice into popular culture. Based on great field work and extensive interviews, it is a great case study with broad and deep implications. Check it out.